24

Odessa Dean @OdessaWaiting ∙ July 15

New York City isn’t a place you live. It’s a place you survive. Unless you’re stupid rich or super lucky. And I’m neither. #GoFundMe #please

The Game Master stopped me on my way out. “Did you get your ID?” he asked.

“Yep,” I told him. “Silly me, it was in my wallet all along, I’d just put it in the wrong pocket.”

“Cool. Hey, I heard you were looking for an apartment,” Brandon said.

How on earth did he know that? Izzy, probably. She never met anyone she couldn’t immediately befriend.

I nodded. “You got any leads?”

“All the nope. I’m the last person you would want to take rental advice from.”

“How so?” I asked. “I mean, you have to live somewhere, right? How’d you find your place?”

Brandon grimaced. “I paid Vickie Marsh a small fortune to get the apartment of my dreams. Apartment of my nightmares is more like it.”

“Small world,” I said. Not only did Vickie end up celebrating her big day in a building that she couldn’t sell, but then she happened to get stuck with a Game Master who was an unhappy client. Talk about adding insult to injury.

“Tell me about it.”

“What makes your apartment so horrible?” I asked. “Is it rats?” I shuddered. Louisiana had rats, but New York City had rats. I’m talking enormous crazed critters almost as big as the nutria back home, with absolutely no fear and big, beady eyes that belonged on a creature out of a bad horror movie. I’d rather face a swamp full of alligators and water moccasins than come face-to-face with a Brooklyn rat in my apartment.

“No rats, thankfully. But the building has a high-tech fire alarm and water sprinklers everywhere, which is great. Until the system malfunctions three, four times a month. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve been jolted awake at two in the morning to wailing sirens and streams of cold water driving me, soaking wet and with ringing ears, into the street. Everything I own that isn’t already ruined is covered in roofing tarps because I don’t know the next time the sprinklers will randomly go off.”

“That sounds horrific!” After hearing everyone’s housing horror stories, I was actually starting to miss Piney Island. Louisiana might be a swamp, but I didn’t have to worry about cockroaches the size of my fist, apartments with broken appliances, or random fire alarms triggering a sprinkler flood. The more I heard, the more I wondered if New York City wasn’t the epicenter of some kind of biblical plague.

“Even my underwear drawer is growing mold. And that’s not even the worst,” he said, flexing his fingers as if he wanted to hit someone.

“How is that even possible?” I asked.

“I live on the top floor. Great view, right? Sure. Except there’s a malfunctioning air handler on the roof mounted right above my unit. Doesn’t even belong to the building, it belongs to the salmonella factory on the first floor, a cheap take-out joint that the city should have shut down ages ago. Randomly throughout the day this AC unit makes a noise like an air horn going off and shakes my whole apartment. Sometimes it’s quiet for hours at a time, then other times it blows every twenty minutes, usually in the dead of the night. I haven’t had a single night of uninterrupted sleep since I moved in.”

“Why don’t you move?”

“Wow, wish I would have thought about that,” he growled.

I held my hands up in mock surrender. “Sorry, I’m not from around here.”

He scowled and continued. “Problem is, every penny I had went into that ridiculous broker’s fee and I’m in an iron-clad sixteen-month lease. I’m reduced to popping sleeping pills each night and huddling under a shower curtain, hoping to get two, maybe three hours of sleep before the sprinkler goes haywire or the HVAC unit erupts.” He held his hand out. It twitched. “See this? The tremors started a few weeks after I moved in. Between too little sleep, the pills, and the gallons of caffeine I down every day just to function . . . well, let’s just say if I could afford health care, I’d probably be hooked up to a pacemaker by now.”

“Isn’t there something you can do?” I knew he was between a rock and a concrete bunker, but there had to be a better way.

“About the tremors? Probably not.”

“I mean about the apartment,” I clarified.

“I wish. I’ve lodged complaints with the city, with the housing board, with the super, with the building, and—of course—with my broker. And have gotten exactly zero for my troubles. Honestly, there were a few times I was ready to take a walk off the roof just to get it to all stop, you know?”

“That sounds horrific.” And here I thought Izzy’s and Parker’s experiences were bad, but this really took the cake. I made a promise to myself then and there that when I was ready to move back home, I would never complain about living with my parents ever again.

Their house wasn’t haunted with the victims of a murder spree’s ghosts. There wasn’t a bug infestation. I wasn’t hiding out illegally in a windowless basement or paying thousands of dollars a month to rent a shoebox studio apartment. I certainly didn’t have to worry about sprinkler floods and random cacophonies driving me up the wall.

Then something he said clicked. “Wait a second, didn’t you say that Vickie Marsh was the broker who found you the nightmare apartment?”

Brandon let out a snort. “The one and only. Out of all the escape rooms in all the cities in all the world, little Miss Broker of the Month had to walk into mine. It’s bad enough I have to see her face on the ‘For Sale’ sign outside every time I come to work, but now I have to deal with listening to her brag about her killer deals and huge commissions right in front of me, too?”

I took a step backward, suddenly aware that the participants—Marlie, Amanda, Gennifer, Izzy, and myself—hadn’t been the only people in the escape room. As the Game Master, Brandon would have had full access. If his apartment was half as bad as he claimed, he certainly had motive to hate Vickie Marsh. And if he hadn’t been getting any sleep, he might not be in the best frame of mind.

I was fairly certain I didn’t want to be in the same room as him anymore. “Sorry, that sucks,” I said, turning and heading toward the door.

“You in a hurry or something?” he asked. I turned to face him. “You sure do ask a lot of questions. I was watching you on the monitors, you know. You didn’t seem half as interested in solving the escape room as you were backing people into corners and interrogating them. I figure you only booked this room as an excuse to talk to me, so ask away. Don’t you want to know?”

“Know what?” I asked, but I had a sinking feeling I already knew the answer. Brandon blamed Vickie for his unlivable living situation. We had discovered one employees-only door into the kitchen, and there might be other ways for employees to access the rooms that we hadn’t found.

“You ever have one of those dreams that’s so real it’s hard to tell if you’re awake or not?” Brandon asked, instead of answering.

I nodded, slowly. In fact, I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare right now.

“That’s how I’ve felt ever since I moved into that dump. Like I’m never really awake but I’m never asleep, either. Then I saw Vickie Marsh all alone in the library, and I realized I finally had a chance to talk to her.”

“Only Vickie didn’t want to talk,” I guessed, unable to stop myself. My head spun as I realized that Brandon couldn’t have possibly seen that Vickie was in the library alone once the hidden passageway door opened and blocked the camera’s view. The only time he’d been alone with Vickie was for a few minutes after our timer ran down.

Gennifer, Amanda, Marlie, Izzy, and I were already in the kitchen when Brandon killed Vickie.

“She had the nerve to tell me to call her office on Monday and we’d work something out. I’ve been calling and emailing her for months! She never once returned a call. Now that I was in the same room as her—finally—I guess I lost it.”

It all made perfect sense when I thought about it. I was kicking myself for not figuring it out sooner, and now I was just buying time until I figured out a way to get far, far away from Brandon before I met the same fate as Vickie had. “I mean, I sorta understand that. You’re upset, and you’re not getting enough sleep, so you weren’t thinking straight. But why’d you have to hit her with my trophy?” I asked.

“I should be thanking you, really,” Brandon said. “Pretty much everything that isn’t nailed down in the escape room is a cheap prop. Plastic. Foam. Cardboard. I could have bashed little Miss Broker of the Month over the head with anything in the room, and it would have bounced right off. It was just sheer dumb luck that the first thing I grabbed was your trophy.”

I found myself wishing that Izzy and I had won a gift certificate instead of that heavy cornhole trophy.

Brandon muffled a yawn. I knew he hadn’t been getting much sleep lately, but there was something immeasurably creepy about someone who could yawn in the middle of a murder confession. “The whole thing was like I was sleepwalking,” he continued. “One minute she was standing there, lecturing me about how I should have read the contract better, and the next thing I knew, I was swinging the trophy.”

I flinched. I really did not want to know the details.

“She screamed, so I hit her again to get her to shut up.”

My mouth was suddenly dry as I realized that the scream we’d heard wasn’t Brandon discovering the dead body, as we’d originally assumed. It was Vickie. She’d still be alive if one of us had followed the Game Master back into the library.

“She fell down that time. I kept swinging that trophy until I heard you and your friend crawling back through the tunnel, and, well, you know the rest.”

I swallowed, hard.

Brandon’s eyes seemed to come back into focus. He backed away from the desk without breaking eye contact. If he’d had a full night’s sleep last night, he might never have spilled his guts like that but somehow, something had cut through his haze and the Game Master realized he’d made a mistake. A huge one.

“I get it,” I babbled. “You did what you had to do. After all she put you through, it was, like, justified.”

“It was,” he said, nodding.

“Plus, with the sleeping pills and all, you were technically under the influence. Any judge could see that.”

“Yup,” he agreed. He moved around the edge of the desk as I inched backward toward the door.

“Besides, sounds to me like Vickie had it coming,” I said. I felt something hit the back of my knees and steadied myself before I could trip over one of the waiting room chairs. If I could reach the door before he did, I would be home free.

“Exactly,” Brandon agreed.

I scooted closer to the door, feeling along the wall behind me for the door handle. When my hand brushed it, I practically doubled over in relief. I was safe.

I turned the doorknob.

Nothing happened.

“Going somewhere?” Brandon asked, sounding closer than I’d realized. While I’d been searching for the door, he’d managed to close the distance between us. I noticed something metallic glinting in his hands. I hoped it was just his enormous key chain, but I had a sinking feeling it was worse. I didn’t want to look down and risk breaking eye contact again. “I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

“My friends are waiting for me outside,” I told him.

He replied with a dry laugh, brandishing a box cutter. He slid a button forward and a sharp-looking blade appeared. “No, they’re not. You forget, I’ve got cameras all over this place. Even outside. I checked before I locked the door, and there’s no one out there.”

“But you’re forgetting one thing,” I said, pressed against the door as he crept closer.

“Oh yeah?” he sneered. “What am I forgetting? You’re so full of questions. What are you, some sort of undercover cop?”

“Nope,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “I’m really not. But he is.”

Detective Vincent Castillo stepped into the room, gun drawn. “Brandon Reaves, drop the knife. You’re under arrest for the murder of Victoria Marsh.”

The box cutter clattered to the ground. The Game Master slowly raised his arms in the air, palms out toward me. He looked over his shoulder. “New guy?”

“Wrong,” Castillo said, approaching the other man. With practiced, efficient motions, he wrenched Brandon’s arms behind his back and clasped handcuffs on his wrists. “I can’t believe I showed up out of the blue and said you were supposed to train me, and you never even questioned it.” He smiled at me over Brandon’s shoulder. “What did I tell you, Odessa? No one ever notices the help.”

I nodded stiffly. When the effects of the shock wore off, I would probably collapse into a puddle of jelly, but right now, it was all I could do to breathe and wait for my pulse to resume a normal rhythm. “You got all that, right?”

“Yup,” Castillo replied. He frog-marched Brandon over to the waiting room chairs and forced him to sit. “Not only did I hear everything, I recorded the whole confession on my phone. More than enough to put him away for murder. People never learn, do they?”

I shook my head slightly. “Nope.”

He turned his attention back to Brandon. “Now, you sit there all quiet-like until transport comes to take you back to the station.” He pulled a card out of his wallet and recited Brandon’s Miranda rights. “Do you understand your rights as I’ve explained them to you?” he asked.

Brandon nodded.

“I need a yes or no,” Castillo prodded.

“Yes. I understand. But there were, like, extenuating circumstances, man. You heard her. It was completely justified. I haven’t had more than a few hours’ sleep in months, not counting when I was doped up on over-the-counter sleeping aids. I was out of my mind when I killed that broker lady. There’s not a jury in New York City that wouldn’t sympathize. Heck, they might even give me a medal!”

“You’ve got a point,” Castillo agreed. “And the DA might not have even chosen to prosecute, based on those circumstances. Until you came after my friend here with a deadly weapon.”

Brandon slumped in his chair, all the fight escaping him like a deflating balloon.

Castillo continued. “Defense can produce a parade of witnesses that the victim ripped off, but once Odessa takes the stand, you’re going away for life. Because there’s no one quite as sympathetic as a kindhearted waitress with a Southern accent.”